words + pictures by Katrina Leno.

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While I continue to try and figure out how this space will grow as I grow (I know I haven’t done much to it for a long while now!) I thought I’d drop off the newly revealed cover for my third book, EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE.

The Lost & Found comes out a week from today and the finished copies have arrived!! I made a little unboxing video to celebrate, and I’ll be sharing lots of fun photos and quotes and goodies up until it’s released on July 5.

I’ll also be writing up a longer piece talking more about my feelings (obviously) – so look out for that!

The last few weeks have been busy with traveling and writing and editing but I am finally back in LA and ready to share the new (and improved, and gorgeous, and unreal perfect) cover of The Lost & Found! This is my second book, and it comes out two months from today! Check my Twitter and Facebook for a giveaway opportunity.

And as always- thank you for following along as I try and do this thing.

I’ve been sitting on this news for a while so it feels so NICE to be able to send it out into the universe: I’ve signed another 2-book deal with HarperTeen! My second book, The Lost & Found, comes out on July 5, and it will be followed by books 3 and 4 in 2017 and 2018. That’s a lot of words. Luckily, I have a lot lot LOT of words to share with you.

I never feel so — I dunno: right with the world, at peace, in my element, etc, pick whatever cliched turn of phrase you like — as when I’m in the middle of a forest. This has everything to do with growing up in homes where you couldn’t see the road from the front lawn, where the next door neighbor’s house was hidden by acres of protected wetlands, where for fun your mother would hand you a pair of waterproof boots and shove you out the back door. Where sometimes you had friends but more often than not you were by yourself (whether because you were actually by yourself or because you just felt by yourself, which, essentially, add up to the same thing).

I remember ice skating on shallow ponds in the woods that made up our backyard, giving names to all my favorite trees and erecting a very solemn shrine for a lost pet. Carving symbols and initials into bark. Coming home covered in burrs.

Things are a little different now. I’ve lived in a small collection of cities over the last ten years. Boston, New York, Edinburgh, Los Angeles. There are forests to be found but they no longer surround me. When I get to one, it’s more purposeful, maybe. I have to work a little harder for it — harder, at least, than walking out my back door.

So here are some photos (the last of the year!) of a forest in Oahu. A short little hike through rainforest and bamboo forest to a waterfall in the middle of nowhere. Lots of ants and mongoose and colorful birds but no large predators (I googled). I’ve always been taught, by various therapists or teachers or people far more emotionally stable than I, to replace images of stress or negativity with images of calm and peace. Real images — things you’ve seen or places you’ve been where you’ve felt totally, completely at ease.

I always imagine greenery. Forests and trees and green as far as the eye can see.

Farewell, 2015. You were a lot of things I didn’t expect and a lot of things I did. Let’s see what comes next.

When I tried to think of a title for this post, the first thing that popped into my head was December First- which is when I’m actually sitting down to put it together. Of course, it won’t publish until tomorrow, but the sentiment remains the same. The “wherethefuckhastheyeargone” sentiment that keeps creeping up behind me and scaring me half to death. 2015 has come and gone (almost) and in its wake it’s left so many good things. (REALLY GOOD THINGS- SOME THAT I CAN’T EVEN TELL YOU ABOUT YET BUT THAT ARE SO BIG AND GOOD AND GOOD AND BIG.)

S and I drove up to San Francisco the other weekend- a miserable drive made worse by accidents (not ours) and construction and general traffic woes. But we ate a lot of pizza and we saw my niece (who calls me something that sounds like “Ana”) and we saw our good friends’ new baby and we met other friends for drinks and we drank wine on my brother’s deck and then we came home, back to LA, me searching Zillow to look up prices on all the houses we passed on the backroads from the 405 to Santa Monica.

Now: a short hop, skip, and jump away from the end of the year, from our trip to Hawaii (!!), from my birthday, from the aforementioned exciting announcement with which I’ll start off 2016 (feel the suspense building?).

I’ll check in again soon. Until then- let’s hope December moves slowly.

Two and a half years ago I went to Point Dume. I took this picture, not knowing of course that all this time later it would serve as the cover for our first album. All I’ve ever wanted to do was write. Books, music: it all comes from the same place. I hope you enjoy it.

The funniest, most inconsistent friend I have is time: you never know when it’s going to speed up or slow down or pause all together or erupt into a million pieces, leaving you to try and figure out which goes where. Lately it’s been slow and easy: the mornings stretching long and quiet, the sunlight taking its time to fully reach our living room, the cooler air of autumn (finally!) slicing in through the screen door.

I’ve updated the balcony-garden, planting herbs and sweeping the floor and putting down cheap outdoor carpet. I’m writing more by hand, using NaNoWriMo as a time not to start another novel (not quite there, yet) but as a structured excuse to freewrite and practice my cursive. My parents came to visit and in a month my best friend will come to visit and in a month and a half S and I will fly to Hawaii. I can’t believe it’s already November. We were Mulder and Scully for Halloween and my hand still wants to write October every time I sit down and open my journal.

Eight months now till the release of The Lost & Found. I’ve never felt the importance of a stretch of time so fully, I’ve never spent so many hours plotting every single possible outcome of every decision I make, of every word I type. It’s good, in a way. Not so good, in another way. I think I need to practice just letting it happen as it will.

In the meantime, I make a lot of granola. I run for the longest stretches I’ve ever managed before. I buy new fountain pens and take photographs of clouds. You were a good one, October. Till we meet again.